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Vigilant
Case Study
Vigilant Keeps Its Cool – and
Improves Its IT System Reliability –
with Nexenta Solutions
West Coast, USA
www.vigilant.org
Legal Services
Summary
Challenge: Virtualize physical servers, replace aging server / storage / network hardware.
Data retention and cost
Solution: NexentaStor HA Cluster Nordisk NorStor
NS2000
Platform: Nordisk, HP, VMware
Use Case: High performance and availability
Benefits:
• More efficient system with less down time
• Comprehensive data security
• Cost savings compared to traditional storage solutions
Business Overview
Vigilant, operating as TOC for half a century, decided to commemorate
the start of the next 50 years by formally changing its name to reflect
what it always has been: Vigilant.
For more than 50 years, Vigilant has been counselling employers in the
Northwest and California. Its staff – employment attorneys, along with
safety, HR, and benefits professionals – guide large and small businesses
from all sectors through the maze of employment issues, from the
everyday to the complex.
Services provided include employee and labor relations, safety concerns,
affirmative action plans (AAPs), group health benefits, consulting,
and workplace training.
Visit us online at nexenta.com
We were feeling the heat, both
literally and figuratively, from our
legacy storage system. Failures
from overheating and age were
causing downtime for staff and
delays in customer response time.
Nexenta was able to solve all these
issues, easily and within budget.
Triet Nguyen
Senior Network Engineer
Vigilant
Challenges
Vigilant has always relied on technology to advance its business. Ironically,
it was all that technology that was crimping the company’s ability to grow
and serve its customers. Using SharePoint 1.0, deployed on a Windows
2000 server in 2005, and then using WSS 3.0 since 2009, Vigilant realized
that it needed a migration path from its older servers that were using
aging RAID arrays. Whenever the company added new services (such
as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, WSS 3.0, Mitel PBX, and VoIP phones),
the system would overheat, leading to potential downtime for
appliances and staff.
One option was to undertake major building renovations, including
high-end cooling systems. The other option was to consolidate the older,
power-eating servers and create a new system with a modern 5U server
and storage virtualization stack powered by ESXi and NexentaStor.
By virtualizing the physical servers, Vigilant could reduce server room
temperatures, prolonging the server lifecycle and increasing overall
reliability of its servers, storage, and networks.
Solution and Benefits
Solution
Nexenta’s core storage platform, NexentaStor, is a SoftwareDefined Storage system based on Linux and a storageoptimized file system based on OpenSolaris/Open Storage
ZFS technology. NexentaStor, is able to retrieve data, thereby
protecting company interests when servers fail.
To reach a workable solution, Vigilant leaned heavily on
Premium Partner Nordisk Systems, Inc., which provided
hardware, professional services, and the bundling with
NexentaStor. NexentaStor provides a cleaner, greener, more
energy-effective solution, all within budget. The solution
eliminates redundant backups, reduces business downtime,
and ensures critical data always is protected and can be
restored in seconds. Snapshot-based replication between
databases copies data changes so that data is updated
at specified times. Built-in software RAID protects data
by storing the same data in different places. Vigilant now
easily manages corporate compliance, along with rules of
governance for data retention.
Toll free: 1-855-639-3682
[email protected]
nexenta.com
NexentaStor delivers high-level efficiencies while providing
enterprise-class performance and manageability. It functions
both as storage array and a virtualization appliance that
abstracts legacy and commodity storage devices, pooling
resources and presenting them at the file or block level to
virtualization servers. By building a just-in-time infrastructure,
with a mix of offerings that are not locked to a single array,
Vigilant IT managers can incrementally migrate off of old arrays
in a manner that best services its business.
Benefits
NexentaStor delivers superior I/O performance – especially for
read-intensive workloads – for this virtualized environment,
all at massive savings over traditional storage solutions.
Integrated inline (not post-process) deduplication further lowers
storage costs by decreasing the total amount of required data
storage. Plus, the NexentaStor solution runs faster and cooler
while preventing downtime due to appliance fatigue. With
NexentaStor’s hardware-agnostic solution, Vigilant can leverage
a single console to oversee and manage its entire storage
infrastructure.
Nexenta Systems, Inc.
451 El Camino Real, Suite 201
Santa Clara, CA 95050
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© 2015 Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Nexenta, NexentaStor, NexentaConnect, NexentaEdge and NexentaFusion are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Nexenta Systems Inc., in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks, service marks and company names mentioned in this
document are properties of their respective owners. Notice: This document is for informational purposes only, and does not set forth any warranty,
expressed or implied, concerning any equipment or service offered or to be offered by Nexenta Systems Inc.
Origination. 2012
Updated. 20150629